It has been shown in several scientific studies that there is strong scientific evidence that recovered memories exist . The content of these memories have been shown to have relatively high corroboration rates.
Evidence
The Recovered Memory Project has collected 101 corroborated cases of recovered memories. Hopper stated that "at least 10% of people sexually abused in childhood will have periods of complete amnesia for their abuse, followed by experiences of delayed recall" Most recovered memories either precede therapy or the use of memory recovery techniques.
The Leadership Council states:
Research has shown that traumatized individuals respond by using a variety of psychological mechanisms. One of the most common means of dealing with the pain is to try and push it out of awareness. Some label the phenomenon of the process whereby the mind avoids conscious acknowledgment of traumatic experiences as dissociative amnesia. Others use terms such as repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, there is near-universal scientific acceptance of the fact that the mind is capable of avoiding conscious recall of traumatic experiences.
Research
Brown, Scheflin and Hammond have reviewed 43 studies that were relevant to the subject of traumatic memory. They found that every study that examined the question of dissociative amnesia in traumatized populations showed that a substantial minority partially or completely forget the traumatic event experienced, and later recover memories of the event. By the year 1999, over 68 studies had been published that document dissociative amnesia after childhood sexual abuse. It was found that no study that had looked for evidence of traumatic or dissociative amnesia after child sexual abuse had failed to find it. (The Leadership Council - Brown, Scheflin, & Whitfield. (1999). Recovered Memories: The Current Weight of the Evidence in Science and in the Courts Journal of Psychiatry & Law, 27, 5-156)
Several studies show fairly high corroboration rates for recovered memories of traumatic events. These rates range from 47 to 77 percent. One study showed amnesia in 12 murderers, with "objective evidence of severe abuse...obtained in 11 cases". (Lewis, D., Yeager, C., Swica, Y., Pincus, J. and Lewis, M. (1997). Objective documentation of child abuse and dissociation in 12 murderers with dissociative identity disorder. Am J Psychiatry, 154(12):1703-10.)
References
Recovered Memories of Sexual Abuse Scientific Research & Scholarly Resources
The Leadership Council - Trauma and Memory
Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (D. Corydon), 1998, Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law W. W. Norton (0-393-70254-5)
van der Kolk, B. A. (1994). The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of post traumatic stress.
Whitfield M.D., C. Memory and Abuse - Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma Health Communications, Inc 3201 SW 15th St, Deerfield Beach, FL.33442-8190.
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